Fulfill Their Destiny

With turkey day behind us, we’re heading full-force into Christmas. Many evergreens have been cut – most of them many months ago – to become holiday trees that we decorate. For me, this is a yearly reminder about an episode of the television show “Friends.” In an episode around Christmas, Phoebe explains that all trees, no matter how scrawny or decrepit, need to fulfill their destiny to become an actual Christmas tree.

This idea causes me to think about the many, many scraps found around the Popular Woodworking Magazine shop and my home shop (more so in my home shop). By leaving these scraps piled in corners or sitting atop benches, or even if you neatly sort and stack your leftovers, are we allowing them to fulfill their destiny?

It’s my opinion that we should release these scraps. Let them achieve their destiny. While that could be a small holiday project (gifts) such as those found in the book “Wood Stash Project Book,” by Kerry Pierce, I’m willing to bet that destiny for most of these scraps is going to be as fuel. That’s right, burn them for heat. (That’s way better than ending up in landfills.)

Of course, burning scrap isn’t always just for heat. Sometimes it’s just for fun, or to destroy evidence, as shown below.

It you have questions about the object in the bonfire, post your comment. Mr. Bender will be watching closely.

Nope. Good try but not quite right. There were no mistakes made on the sofa frame. It is lacking its arm-rolls and front “C” scrolls but those parts were burned shortly after the whole. The mistake was unable to be burned, therefore the sofa had to suffer the consequences. And yes, I’m being as cryptic as Mr. Huey about my reasons for burning a perfectly good tiger maple Chippendale sofa frame.

Another valiant try but still slightly off the mark. The only mistakes were beginning to make a requested sofa (as a gift) in mahogany only to be told tiger maple would be preferred, followed by “I don’t think I really want a sofa”. It sat in storage for three years waiting for the recipient to change their mind. The impending settlement on my home in PA and a lack of space in the trailer precipitated the burning of a perfectly good, but un-upholstered, sofa.

A couple of years ago my kids bought me a “Big Green Egg” for my birthday. A Big Green Egg is an outdoor grill that burns wood (or charcoal) instead of gas. That thing has been the best device I’ve ever had for keeping my shop neat and clean. You can even use the saw dust for smoking,….. meat, of course. At the end of a day in the shop you can go out in the back yard and destroy all your mis-cut pieces and enjoy a steak at the same time. Get one there great!

I have a one man woodworking business where I make scroll saw puzzles that I sell at local craft shows. This generates large amounts of “scrap”. I have a box next to my scroll saw that I put the larger pieces in and on a slow day I go through them and trace out patterns of several smaller projects that I have. I have paid my entrance to more than one craft show with “free” wood that would otherwise end up in my friends stoves and fireplaces. My waste scraps are truly that when they go out the door.
Charlie @ Knotthead Woodworking

Every fall my wife starts bugging me about how cluttered and messy my shop is with all the piles of wood everywhere and the barrells full of small pieces. And every spring she congratulates me on finally getting around to cleaning up my shop. I just smile and say, “Yes dear, thank you dear.”

As an owner of your general small home work shop I use to hang on to all scrap because one day it will become something. And now I can say that they became heat which allow me to make other projects in the cold days, also it allow me to make some more scraps thus the never ending loop.

That is a very liberating picture. I’ve got this project in the basement that I mucked up by being stupid and I have been trying to figure out a way to un-muck-it or turn it into something else more useful. Firewood is very useful.

In that case, I’m not sure I can tell the story…though I will say the burning of a Chippendale sofa frame had nothing to do with “destroying the evidence” as Mr. Huey suggests. It had more to do with a choice between burning the frame or NEEDING to hide the evidence…